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Sandu fire, April 2026 Sandu, Upper Fuladu West, Jimara

Out · last detection 1 May 2026, 14:58 UTC

The fire started on 30 April 2026 in Sandu, Gambia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,325 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 32th largest in Basse since 2016 (of 56 with a page). Number 31 in Gambia in 2026, of 41.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
1,325ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
30 Apr 2026 – 1 May 2026
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
30 Apr
2026
Heat detections
24
in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Energy released
132MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

1 May 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Apr1 May

How it evolved, day by day

301

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 49 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Sandu where it started
    1,214 ha reached on 30 Apr
    3.6 %
  2. Upper Fuladu West
    37 ha
    0.1 %
  3. Jimara
    17 ha
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 23 Apr 2026
After · 8 May 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 2 May 2026 the air beside the fire reached 134 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 81: 5.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak134 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10862 µg/m³
Optical depth0.64
2829301234
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 24Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Gambia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sandu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 April 2026 and 1 May 2026: 2 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,325 hectares (13.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Sandu (1,214 ha, 3.6 %); Upper Fuladu West (37 ha, 0.1 %); Jimara (17 ha, 0.0 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Gambia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.